"United Nations peacekeepers fathered children with women and girls in Haiti before abandoning the mothers to lives of poverty in the disaster-stricken Caribbean country, a new study says.

The study, published Tuesday in The Conversation, examined the impact of the UN's long-running Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which ran from 2004 to 2017.

The peacekeepers were often repatriated after the pregnancies became public and offered the mothers no support once the babies were born, according to the study. Locals have labeled the children fathered by peacekeepers as 'Petit MINUSTAH.'

The study split the accounts of sexual encounters into three categories: sexual violence, transactional sex and 'evolving relationships.'

The data collected showed that sexual violence was in the minority of reported encounters, while the more pervasive problem appeared to be transactional sex. The study found in many cases that women and girls would have sex with MINUSTAH personnel in exchange for money or food.

'They had sex with the girls not even for money, it's just for food, for one meal,' a man from Port Salut told the researchers..."